


Did You Get To Say Bye?

by VioletThePorama



Category: Sam & Max
Genre: Angst, Gen, I don't kill anybody I just reference it, I ship Sam/Max but it isn't specifically shown here, I've been obsessing over this fandom for a week, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Not Really Character Death, Post 305 ending, Technically he's still fine, You know this timeline stuff rather reminds me of Homestuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-25
Updated: 2019-06-28
Packaged: 2020-05-19 18:50:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19362454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VioletThePorama/pseuds/VioletThePorama
Summary: Sam and Max are back, just like before. Everything is fine. Right?Or: Time to talk about trauma





	1. No, But I Wish I Did

It had been a few months since Max had exploded. Well, since Sam’s Max had exploded, anyway. Now there was another Max, and they were back and fighting crime together, just like always. 

 

But…

 

It wasn’t the same. 

 

_ Past _ Max was different than what Sam was used to. It wasn’t obvious, but sometimes little things added up. Like his partner forgetting more things about past cases than usual, or mentioning a right name in the wrong context, or saying things about their last few missions that Sam didn’t remember happening. 

 

At times, it wasn’t noticeable. The two of them could stumble their way through a job, causing mayhem to banter back and forth about, just like any other time. 

 

But sometimes, Sam would comment on a sign, or mention something about one of their friends in passing, and Max would look at him a bit differently, not quite meeting his eyes, like there was a loss of familiarity, or like he was looking for somebody else…

 

And maybe Sam did it too. He wasn’t sure, but sometimes he felt wistful, or like he couldn’t talk to Max about something, or even like  _ grieving _ , even though Max was still right there. 

 

It had been a few months since either of them had slept soundly. 

 

In the night, Sam would gasp awake, with a name on his tongue and an image in his mind of a waving behemoth. The dog would lay in bed, stiff and unmoving, until he heard breathing from the bed above his own, signaling that his partner was  _ okay _ . That he wasn’t…

 

But he was. This Max wasn’t the one Sam knew, but he wasn’t a stranger either. Calling the lagomorph a replacement felt wrong, but was the closest to the truth. But Sam was a replacement too, wasn’t he?

 

Sam would lay in bed, pretending to still be asleep, until either sleep reclaimed him, or until he heard Max wake up as well. 

 

He wasn’t sure if he ever woke up the bunny, or if Max sometimes woke up before him, but his partner seemed to be awake most nights. 

 

It would happen with a choked whine from the top bunk, and then some shifting, before it quieted down, but Max’s breathing never settled back down into the deep breaths of sleep. Not that Sam heard, anyway. 

 

The two friends would lay in their respective beds, pretending that they were both asleep, and ignoring the fact that neither of them could manage it. 

 

Sam never got up, but sometimes he could hear Max scamper out of bed and into their office. At times, he could hear the door click, signaling that Max had left the building. Those nights always worried the dog the most, but he always fell back asleep before Max returned, and Sam would wake up to find his little buddy back in the top bunk, like nothing had ever happened. 

 

The bunny could take care of himself. 

 

__________________________

 

One day, when Sam went to see Sybil (and by proxy, her kid), Sybil kept him from leaving with a short question as she fed her baby, something that Sam liked to avert his eyes from. 

 

“Did you two have a fight?”

 

“Huh?” Sam turned away from the exit, not quite looking at her. He didn’t want to expose his eyes to the sight, or remember any… Unsavory facts about Sybil’s honeymoon.

 

“You and Max. Where is he, anyway?”

 

“Well Sybil, Max stayed at the office to watch brain-rotting home demolition channels. He really likes it when they tear down the walls, but it tends to make him want to do the same to our office,” Sam explained. “Why do you think me and the little guy had a fight?”

 

Sybil moved in his peripherals, and Sam finally looked to see the exasperated look she was giving him. “You two have been less…  _ you _ than normal. You know you can talk to me. I’m a licensed psychotherapist.”

 

Sam waved her off with the excuse, “We’ve just been at a lull between jobs.”

 

But the conversation made him think. 

 

__________________________

 

The next time Sam woke up in the night, with the image of a black and white room blazed into his mind, he lay in bed, and listened for Max. It took a while to be sure, but it didn’t  _ sound _ like the rabbit was asleep. So if he waited a moment longer…

 

Sure enough, Sam heard an indecipherable noise from above as the lagomorph shifted, and then climbed down the ladder, shuffling to the office. 

 

Sam stood, for the first time going into another room in the night, instead of curling up and pretending that nothing was wrong. In the office, he spotted Max looking out the window. 

 

“Hey, little buddy.”

 

Max startled, before spinning around with a predatory grin. “Hey Sam. Up to do some morning cardio? You could use it.”

 

Sam ignored the jibe, and moved past him to the kitchen. He didn’t have to glanced back to know that Max was following him. 

 

“Do you want some coffee?” He offered.

 

“Boy Sam! You know I do!”

 

Pumping Max full of caffeine was typically a bad idea, but he needed Max awake, focused, and content enough for the conversation to go where it needed to. 

 

Max hopped up on the counter next to him, flipping on the light and watching as Sam poured in the water. Sam decided not to berate him for putting his feet on the counter. 

 

“So why are you up so early?” Max asked, and then grinned, teeth glinting from the overhead light. “Was it the commissioner?”

 

“‘Fraid not, little buddy. I had something I wanted to talk to you about, and it’s making me more anxious than a kid with a freshly served ice cream cone in the middle of a Texas summer.”

 

“Well what is it?” Max huffed, shoving Sam’s arm. “Are you finally going to pop the question? Or admit to an affair with Jurgen?”

 

Sam watched his partners hyperactive bouncing. The lagomorph was becoming more and more excited with each guess. He turned his attention back to the coffee.

 

“Did you get a chance to say goodbye?”

 

Max stopped his taunts abruptly, and Sam could see his mouth hanging open in the reflection of the coffee pot. 

 

“To your Sam… I don’t know how many things were different.”

 

Max still wasn’t answering, and Sam curled in on himself some, wondering if he was going about the situation all wrong. 

 

He was sure it was a comical sight. A six-foot dog hunching over like an old lady at the supermarket. 

 

“You said you killed your Sam. My Max killed  **himself** . What else changed?” Sam swallowed, and forced his gaze back on his partner. “Did you get to say goodbye to him? Me?”

 

Finally, the lagomorph moved, putting his arms over each other and around his torso like he was hugging himself. It took all of Sam’s willpower not to pull him into a hug. “Wow Sam, great job handling this one delicately. Aren’t you always telling  _ me _ to get more tact?”

 

Max laughed humorlessly, the noise grating on Sam as the dog lowered his ears and watched him sadly. 

 

“I got to say bye, yeah. Right after he told me to kill him. Did your me have a cool door in his brain? Sam had a front row seat to everything his body was doing, in some weird dark room. He told he it’d be really cool to blow him up,” The lagomorph grinned manically. “Just like on TV.”

 

Sam nodded, opening his mouth to respond, before Max pressed on, sounding more and more hysterical with each word. 

 

“It wasn’t, you know? There weren’t even any guts! He took control at the last minute and went  _ far away _ . I didn’t even get to see the explosion up close. It was...”

 

“I’m sorry, little buddy,” Sam murmured, choked up. “Max had a door, but he wasn’t in it. A manifestation of his superego was. It wanted him to wipe out the eastern half of the United States.”

 

“So you didn’t.” Max said. 

 

Didn’t what-

 

Oh. Right.

 

“He waved to me before he left.”

 

“He smiled at me before I pressed the button,” Max stated, swallowing before he moved forward and took the coffee once Sam poured it. “It’d like you have a death wish or something.”

 

Then Max looked at him, with that look, lacking recognition and full of  _ something _ . 

 

Sam started crying, a whimper pushing past the welled up tension in his chest, and breaking the dam. 

 

The dog was vaguely aware of Max saying something, and then of being pulled into another room and laid down. He couldn’t make out anything clear, babbling to his partner, until he passed out somewhere amidst the tears. 

 

When Sam woke up, Max was pressed up against his side, with a cup of coffee spilled on the mattress of his bed. 

 

It had been a few months since his best friend died, but Sam would make it work. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic was partially inspired by SirSirWolficus's fic 'But You're Not'! Go check them out!


	2. Yes, But I Didn't Want To

Max awoke with a choked wheeze, and pulled his blanket up further over his form, shoving any thoughts of his nightmare into the back of his mind. Instead of focusing on that, he listened for Sam.

 

It  _ sounded _ like he was still asleep (though the dog was turning out to be annoyingly good at pretending to be asleep), so Max turned onto his side and eyed the door to the office, waiting for his eyes to adjust. Then, as soon as he was confident that he could make it across the room without walking into (too many) things, he went down the ladder (three at a time!), and went to the next room. 

 

While there wasn’t really much for him to do, there were still a few things, so he started with the TV, muting it and turning it onto the most obnoxiously bright channel he could find. To his admittedly morbid delight, there were no seizure warnings of any kind. What fun. He hoped the news would cover something about that soon. Maybe the company would go bankrupt!

 

The lagomorph sat on the couch, and left the show in the corner of the screen as Max browsed the guide, looking to memorize any information about the show or actors that he didn’t know, and upon realizing that he already knew just about all the trivia, recited the information to himself upon seeing the title. 

 

Max was just thinking about abandoning the TV and going to find something else to do, when he heard a voice to his side. 

 

“Hey little buddy. Couldn’t sleep?”

 

Max gave a surprised gasp and threw the remote at Sam, who sighed in response, batting the projectile away. It clattered to the floor, and interestingly enough, the batteries fell out of the back. That was gonna be fun later. 

 

“Well Sam, I was actually up devising-”  _ ways to kill you in your sleep. How topical. _ “-ways to make the whole building blow up at once! That’s way more fun than sleeping like some kind of loser!”

 

Max grinned, turned towards his pal, and mimed an explosion with his hands, throwing them out to either side. 

 

Sam rubbed his neck. “But Max, I keep all my stuff in this building.”

 

The rabbity thing huffed.

 

“...  _ You _ keep all your stuff in this building.”

 

Well that was true. How annoying. 

 

“I was thinking about how to blow up Bosco’s then. Is that good enough for you, Sam?”

 

Sam shrugged, murmuring his agreement. As the dog moved to sit on the couch next to him, Max noted that he looked pretty tired. Then, immediately disregarding this information, Max bounced up and raced off to the kitchen to find something else to do. 

 

The lagomorph pulled old spices out of a cabinet and replaced them with a box of cereal. He had to crush the box to get it to fit, stuffing it all the way into the back. Then he put a carton of nearly-spoiled milk in with the stale flakes. It was probably time to go shopping. 

 

To his surprise, Sam didn’t stop Max until he dropped one of the containers of spices while shoving them into the fridge, shattering the container and sending glass everywhere. 

 

Sam immediately scooped up the lagomorph without taking a step, and had him deposit the rest of the spices on a counter. Then he set Max on a table. 

 

The rabbit leapt up and got the lights, along with a broom for Sam to use. 

 

“You should’ve let me jump in the glass. I wanna make glass angels- you missed a spot!”

 

Max directed Sam to where more glass was, grinning as the dog sniffed and sneezed as more mystery-spices were stirred up. 

 

“I was getting that- and if you did make a glass angel, I’d have to be picking glass out of your furry white behind for weeks.”

 

“Sounds sort of like a win-win situation.” Max snarked back, and watched for approximately another half a minute before his thoughts began to stray to places even  _ he _ didn’t like. 

 

The lagomorph bounced up and down on the table, looking around for something else to do. “Hey Sam, is Jimmy Two-Teeth-”

 

“He moved out, remember Max?”

 

Did he?

 

“What about Sybil? I bet we could wake up her baby if we went down right about now!”

 

“Sybil doesn’t live in her office anymore. She bought a house with Lincoln.”

 

Oh yeah. Right.

 

“I hope they paid the landlord purely in pennies!”

 

“You crack me up, little buddy,” Sam stated, throwing away the last of the glass, and then picking up Max as he passed by the table. 

 

Max laughed, moving to cling to Sam as he was brought back to the couch. Unfortunately, once Sam sat down, the dog just turned his attention back to the TV. Didn’t he know there wasn’t anything good on?

 

And besides, Max had already watched TV.

 

The program had defaulted back to the bright show with flashing lights that Max had been watching, after the guide had been left on for too long. 

 

“Do you see the remote anywhere, Max? You can’t have chucked it that far. Your arms are too small and noodle-like.”

 

Max looked down at the remote. “No can do, Sam. I think it might’ve run away again.”

 

“I knew we weren’t feeding it enough!”

 

Sam got up and started looking around for the remote. Max pointed over to one of their piles of clutter, and then moved the remote under the couch when Sam wasn’t looking. 

 

After a moment, watching his partner struggle got old too (he watched it happen all the time), and Max turned to look around the room, eventually fixing his gaze on the door. 

 

He must have been staring too long, because Sam put a hand on Max’s arm. 

 

“Do you want to go somewhere?”

 

“It’s  _ boring _ here Sam. Let’s go do something!”

 

Max slouched down so he could headbutt the couch from a better angle, and then pouted at Sam. The dog had had his mouth open to say something, but closed it upon seeing Max’s face. 

 

“Alright. Anywhere in particular you want to go?” Sam asked. Max shrugged, but bounced up all the same. 

 

Sam went into his room to grab his hat. It was a comical sight, seeing as Sam was still in his pajamas, but changing from those would take too long, so Max raced over to latch onto Sam’s arm before he could think about getting on his work clothes. 

 

Then they left the building. 

 

They walked down the street together, but even outside of their office, there wasn’t much to do. Everybody was either gone or working on something. Even Bosco’s Inconvenience lived up to its name, being closed with all of the lights off. 

 

Sam brushed off his idea of breaking into one of the buildings, so the lagomorph wandered around instead, sulking as Sam walked down the path. 

 

Max glanced up at a building top, and blanched, turning away and quickly distracting himself with something else. 

 

Sam seemed to notice the movement, and approached the hyperactive rabbit.

 

“You keep looking at that building. Is everything alright?”

 

Was he? Did he look more than once?

 

“Don’t worry about it Sam,” Max put on his most convincing grin, but his partner didn’t seem convinced. Instead the dog moved over to the building, and climbed up the fire escape. 

 

“Come on Max! I don’t want you to be down there alone!”

 

Max followed, pushing down his dread and keeping up his manic expression. 

 

Once at the top, he stayed towards the ladder, afraid to stray any further. Sam searched the roof for anything interesting. 

 

Max looked at the sky. Nobody could see stars anymore, not in the cities but there were some shows of people looking at  _ constellations _ in parts of the world where there were still nature reserves, and comparing it to what people used to document being able to see. With all the pollution of the city, all that the lagomorph could see was smog and dark, though the moon was still mostly visible, over near where  _ Max had been able to see- _

 

In his searching,  _ Sam got close to where- _

 

“You don’t look so good,” Sam said from his side, and he didn’t (couldn’t) respond, staring off into space. 

 

It almost felt like he was going to cry. That, or sneeze.

 

Max couldn’t remember the last time he’d cried. (No wait, yes he could. It was when Sam had had his brain stolen. Wasn’t it cool that Max cried when his friend was just gone, and not at all when he actually  _ died _ ?)

 

Instead of letting himself cry, he turned to go back down the ladder, only to be hoisted back up by Sam, who tucked him under one arm like a football. He was brought further back onto the roof. 

 

“Sam!” Max struggled, turning to bite at the dogs arm. “Put me down!”

 

“Max- _ ow, stop that _ \- you have to tell me why you keep coming up here.” Sam put a hand on Max’s head, pressing down and applying more pressure until Max stopped biting him. 

 

“Were you following me?!?” The lagomorph shrieked, squirming and trying to shove at his captor. 

 

Sam sighed and set him down, letting his  _ friend _ scramble back several paces and bare his teeth. 

 

“You keep looking up here, Max. Sybil said-”

 

“Oh, you’re conspiring with Sybil behind my back now? Good to know!”

 

“That’s not- I didn’t mean to-”

 

Max cocked his head, eyes narrowed and smile wide. “What  _ did _ you mean to do, Sam?”

 

The dog lowered his ears and looked down. (Looking like he was going to cry again.  _ Good _ .)

 

“I just want to help you, little buddy-”

 

He kept-

 

“-You haven’t been sleeping and I asked Sybil what to do. She said you might have been being reminded of something out here, and you kept looking at this building so...”

 

“-So you wanted to bring me up here? Before I was ready? That’s a nice medical practice, isn’t it? What if you make it worse?” Max taunted, pulling the guilt card. 

 

“I’m pretty sure you’ve already been up here by yourself, little buddy. I know you leave the office sometimes-”

 

Great. Sometimes it was easy to forget that Sam was a somewhat competent detective. 

 

“Don’t call me that!” Max screeched. “I’m not your  **little buddy** ! My Sam is  _ dead _ ! He died up there, and I  **killed** him!”

 

Max turned and pointed into the sky, near where the moon was, and fell to his knees with the weight of the  _ laugh _ that tore out of his mouth. His vision clouded over with tears, and he couldn’t even remember the exact spot where Sam had died, even though he had watched the horizon for hours, fixated on the location- 

 

_ It was different here- _

 

_ It was- _

 

He was crying. 

 

There was a thump and some shuffling noises as (the other) Sam moved over. 

 

Max turned a bit, whining and rubbing the fur on his face. Sam sat a bit away from him, offering a patient smile. Max launched himself at the dog, sobbing out an apology. 

 

“It’s okay, little-” Sam cut himself off, stumbling over his words until Max slammed his head into the dogs arm. 

 

“Don’t- don’t-  _ don’t _ ,” Max ordered hysterically, headbutting him again. 

 

“Don’t stop- you can say it- Sam!” The lagomorph cried, and Sam picked him up, and offered his hat to Max, for some reason.

 

Max clung to it.

  
“Okay,  **little buddy** .”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My obsession still isn't over and I wanted to try angst from both angles. Sorry if it's ooc, but making the gremlin cry is really hard?


End file.
